The gov's veto was overturned and MA is now part of the wine shipping community. The only drawback is that wineries that produce over 30,000 gallons must go through a distributor. I'll take what I can get, but that little clause means I still have to have my Hillside Select shipped to family out of state. Another plus in the bill was that a person can now take home the unconsumed portion of a bottle from a restaurant after a meal. Doesn't apply to me but I'm sure some people don't finish... [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/smile.gif[/img]

We have the take home law here in Fla too, and it has to be sealed with some kind of special tape to "certify" that it was taken from a restaurant and remains unopened on the way home. I've never done it. I don't buy entire bottles at restaraunts. I can't stand the idea of spending $25 for a $10 bottle of wine.

It is rather restrictive though I think (just from reading other postings), it appears that if a winery is represented in MA, then they cannot ship direct either. Also if a winery has a wine you like but is not shipped to MA, then it also cannot be shipped directly to you since they are already represented. If they want to ship directly, they have to be unrepresented for at least 6 months.

One of the problems is that like Maine, MA taxes every bottle of wine brought into the state. The good news for MA consumers, is they don't have to pay additional taxes at retail as the doubley taxed folks in Maine do. Because of this, wholesalers in both states will bring partial lines into their states based of popularity. When we lived in Maine we could not even special order wines from a line that had other wines in the local stores.